HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 







months of labour found that the Macquarie and Castlereagh Rivers, with the Namoi 

 and the Gvvydir, were tributaries of that artery of the west which he named the Darling. 



Sturt was sent out on another expedition in the following year this time to the 

 south. He was accompanied by George, the son of Alexander Macleay, who had arrived 

 in the colony as Colonial Secretary 

 soon after Darling. Sturt made for 

 the Murrumbidgee River, which he 

 descended in a small boat, passed 

 its junction with the Hume, which 

 he named the Murray not know- 

 ing that it had been named the 

 Hume by its discoverer and then 

 traced the united waters of the 

 Murrumbidgee, Murray and Dar- 

 ling till they fell into Lake 

 Alexandrina, and eventually into 

 the sea in Encounter Bay. 



The designs of the French 

 to form settlements in Australia 

 and Van Diemen's Land were so 

 strongly suspected by the British 

 Government, that repeated instruc- 

 tions were sent out -to the 

 Governors of New South Wales 

 to keep watch and ward along 

 their shores. The alarm was kept 

 up for many years by the ap- 

 pearance of French ships off the 

 coast, nominally equipped for pur- 

 poses of discovery or scientific research ; but in reality, as it was then believed, to 

 take possession of any unoccupied territory they could find. In Darling's time, for 

 instance, a French corvette, the Astrolabe, sailed into Port Jackson, and her Commander, 

 in reply to enquiries made by His Excellency, informed him that the expedition was 

 a purely scientific one. But Darling, in his despatches to the Home Government, 

 wrote that it was perhaps fortunate that three men-o'-war were then anchored in the 

 Harbour, and that another had just sailed for Western Port ; facts which, he said, 

 might make the Frenchman a little " more circumspect in his proceedings than he other- 

 wise would have been." 



To prevent the French from occupying the territory, Darling sent out two expedi- 

 tions in 1826 one to Western Port, and the other to King George's Sound. In the 

 event of the officers in charge finding the French already in occupation at either of 

 those places, they were thus instructed : " You will, notwithstanding, land the troops, 

 and signify to the- Frenchmen that their continuance with any view to establishing 

 themselves, or colonization, would be considered an unjustifiable intrusion on His 



GOVERNOR BOURKE S STATUE. 



